Back to Reading & Writing

Form, Structure, and Sense

Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions · 104 questions · every one comes with a full explanation.

Practice this skill
  1. 1The radiation that ______ during the decay of radioactive atomic nuclei is known as gamma radiation.Easy · Standard English Conventions
  2. 2In recent years, economists around the world have created new tools that quantify the overall well-being of a country's citizens. Economists in India, for example, use an Ease of LEasy · Standard English Conventions
  3. 3Mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz used the metaphor of the "butterfly effect" to explain how seemingly minor events can have major impacts on future weather. According Easy · Standard English Conventions
  4. 4In 1903, environmentalist John Muir guided President Theodore Roosevelt on a scenic, sprawling trip through California's Yosemite Valley. Upon returning from the three-day excursioEasy · Standard English Conventions
  5. 5To survive when water is scarce, embryos inside African turquoise killifish eggs ______ a dormant state known as diapause. In this state, embryonic development is paused for as lonEasy · Standard English Conventions
  6. 6In 1637, the price of tulips skyrocketed in Amsterdam, with single bulbs of rare varieties selling for up to the equivalent of $200,000 in today's US dollars. Some historians _____Easy · Standard English Conventions
  7. 7Formed in 1967 to foster political and economic stability within the Asia-Pacific region, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was originally made up of five members: ThailanEasy · Standard English Conventions
  8. 8Atoms in a synchrotron, a type of circular particle accelerator, travel faster and faster until they ______ a desired energy level, at which point they are diverted to collide withEasy · Standard English Conventions
  9. 9Led by Syrian American astronomer Shadia Habbal, the Solar Wind Sherpas are an intrepid team of scientists who travel the globe to study solar winds, the streams of particles emanaEasy · Standard English Conventions
  10. 10Farouk El-Baz, a geologist and space scientist, ______ part of the team that selected the lunar landing sites for the Apollo program during the 1960s and 1970s.Easy · Standard English Conventions
  11. 11Obsidian is a kind of volcanic glass formed when lava cools so quickly that the atoms inside it cannot arrange themselves in a crystalline structure. You ______ more about obsidianEasy · Standard English Conventions
  12. 12Public-awareness campaigns about the need to reduce single-use plastics can be successful, says researcher Kim Borg of Monash University in Australia, when these campaigns give conEasy · Standard English Conventions
  13. 13Midway through her 1968 jazz album A Monastic Trio, Alice Coltrane switches instruments, swapping the piano for the harp. With the same fluid style that Coltrane was famous for on Easy · Standard English Conventions
  14. 14Objects ranging from the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle to the Yamaha VMAX motorcycle to the Komachi bullet train ______ designed by twentieth-century industrial designer Kenji Ekuan.Easy · Standard English Conventions
  15. 15In the historical novel The Surrender Tree, Cuban American author Margarita Engle uses poetry rather than prose ______ the true story of Cuban folk hero Rosa La Bayamesa.Easy · Standard English Conventions
  16. 16Like other amphibians, the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) is unable to generate its own heat, so during periods of subfreezing temperatures, it ______ by producing large amounts of gluEasy · Standard English Conventions
  17. 17While exploring Nevada's Gypsum Cave in 1930, Seneca and Abenaki archaeologist Bertha Parker made her most famous discovery: the skull of a now-extinct ground sloth (NothrotheriopsEasy · Standard English Conventions
  18. 18The sun never sets during the Arctic summer in the Far North. In response, reindeer in this region must change their sleep habits. Instead of resting when it gets dark, they rest wEasy · Standard English Conventions
  19. 19British scientists James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize in part for their 1953 paper announcing the double helix structure of DNA, but it is misleading to say that WaEasy · Standard English Conventions
  20. 20In order to prevent nonnative fish species from moving freely between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, marine biologist Bella Galil has proposed that a saline lock system be installEasy · Standard English Conventions
  21. 21The African Games Co-production Market, one of over 180 annual international conferences supporting video game development, ______ the growth of the African gaming industry by helpEasy · Standard English Conventions
  22. 22The classic children's board game Chutes and Ladders is a version of an ancient Nepalese game, Paramapada Sopanapata. In both games, players encounter "good" or "bad" spaces while Easy · Standard English Conventions
  23. 23Literary agents estimate that more than half of all nonfiction books credited to a celebrity or other public figure are in fact written by ghostwriters, professional authors who arEasy · Standard English Conventions
  24. 24In the early twentieth century, Joseph Kekuku and other Hawaiian ______ in the mainland United States to the bright and lilting sound of the kīkā kila, or Hawaiian steel guitar. ThEasy · Standard English Conventions
  25. 25Smaller than poppy seeds, tardigrades are tiny, but they are tough. These minuscule animals can survive for thirty years without food or water, and ______ can withstand extreme temEasy · Standard English Conventions
  26. 26The US Geological Survey wants to map every human-made structure in the United States, and it is asking volunteers to help. Cassie Tammy Wang and Ashish D'Souza are just two of theEasy · Standard English Conventions
  27. 27In his groundbreaking book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, Vivek Bald uses newspaper articles, census records, ships' logs, and memoirs to tell the __Easy · Standard English Conventions
  28. 28When writing The Other Black Girl (2021), novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris drew on her own experiences working at a publishing office. The award-winning book is Harris's first novel, Easy · Standard English Conventions
  29. 29In winter, the diets of Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, are influenced more by food availability than by food preference. Although the monkeys prefer to eat vegetatiEasy · Standard English Conventions
  30. 30Food and the sensation of taste are central to Monique Truong's novels. In The Book of Salt, for example, the exiled character of Bình connects to his native Saigon through the fooEasy · Standard English Conventions
  31. 31Earth is not a perfect sphere. Due to the ______ gravitational pull, Earth bulges out on the sides closest to and farthest from the Moon. This distorting pull is known as a tidal fEasy · Standard English Conventions
  32. 32Richard Spikes was a prolific African American inventor known for his contributions to automotive engineering. Between 1907 and 1946, he patented many inventions, ______ an automobEasy · Standard English Conventions
  33. 33Even though bats prefer very sweet nectar, the plants that attract them have evolved to produce nectar that is only moderately sweet. A recent study ______ why: making sugar is eneEasy · Standard English Conventions
  34. 34In the late 1960s, inspired in part by the sight of laundry hanging on a clothesline, African American abstract painter Sam Gilliam began to create his iconic "Drape" paintings. HeEasy · Standard English Conventions
  35. 35American poet Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems on scraps of paper, but she also took steps to collect these works. From 1858 to around 1864, for example, she copied more thaEasy · Standard English Conventions
  36. 36Scientists believe that, unlike most other species of barnacle, turtle barnacles (Chelonibia testudinari) can dissolve the cement-like secretions they use to attach ______ to a seaEasy · Standard English Conventions
  37. 37Occupying a significant part of modern-day Nigeria, the Kingdom of Benin was one of the major powers in West Africa between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. It ______ ruledEasy · Standard English Conventions
  38. 38In the 2011 documentary The Barber of Birmingham, civil rights activist James Armstrong recounts how his barbershop in Birmingham, Alabama, ______ as a political hub for members ofEasy · Standard English Conventions
  39. 39Former First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt and Indian activist and educator Hansa Mehta were instrumental in drafting the United Nations' Universal Declaration of HumEasy · Standard English Conventions
  40. 40If simple sugars such as ribose and glycolaldehyde ______ Earth from elsewhere and survived impact—a possibility astrophysicist Nicolle Zellner outlined in a 2020 study—the sugars Easy · Standard English Conventions
  41. 41Photographer Ansel Adams's landscape portraits are iconic pieces of American art. However, many of the ______ of landscapes were intended not as art but as marketing; a concessionsEasy · Standard English Conventions
  42. 42Each year in the fall, when the weather starts to cool in the northern hemisphere, millions of North American monarch butterflies journey south. Searching for food and warmer habitEasy · Standard English Conventions
  43. 43Wanda Diaz-Merced is an astrophysicist who lost her sight when she was young. Diaz-Merced's condition inspired her to develop software that can translate scientific data into soundEasy · Standard English Conventions
  44. 44If you try on one of artist Nick Cave's signature Soundsuits, you can expect to swish, rustle, or clang every time you move. Cave makes his suits out of found objects, everything fEasy · Standard English Conventions
  45. 45In 1899, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius developed an equation to answer a long-standing question: why do chemical reactions speed up at higher temperatures? The Arrhenius equatioEasy · Standard English Conventions
  46. 46In his 1963 exhibition Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, Korean American artist Nam June Paik showed how television images could be manipulated to express an artist's persEasy · Standard English Conventions
  47. 47A member of the Cherokee Nation, Mary Golda Ross is renowned for her contributions to NASA's Planetary Flight Handbook, which ______ detailed mathematical guidance for missions to Easy · Standard English Conventions
  48. 48Botanists recognize over fifty different species of sunflower. One species, the silverleaf sunflower, ______ both an early-flowering ecotype that tends to grow in coastal areas andEasy · Standard English Conventions
  49. 49In 1990, California native and researcher Ellen Ochoa left her position as chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at a NASA research center ______ the space agency's asEasy · Standard English Conventions
  50. 50Why are Rome's famous concrete structures, such as the Colosseum, still standing after 2,000-plus years, when modern concrete may not even last for fifty? Scientists ______ that thEasy · Standard English Conventions
  51. 51For thousands of years, people in the Americas ______ the bottle gourd, a large bitter fruit with a thick rind, to make bottles, other types of containers, and even musical instrumEasy · Standard English Conventions
  52. 52In 1881, French chemist Camille Faure redesigned the rechargeable lead-acid battery. Faure's design greatly increased the amount of electricity that the original battery, which theEasy · Standard English Conventions
  53. 53The alga species Chlorella vulgaris is very efficient at making oxygen. For this reason, scientists are currently exploring ways to use this species in space. C. vulgaris might be Easy · Standard English Conventions
  54. 54With its towering, six-spired exterior of granitelike quartz monzonite, the Salt Lake Temple is one of the most instantly recognizable structures in the state of Utah. However, manEasy · Standard English Conventions
  55. 55Dr. Rocío Paola Caballero-Gill is a paleoceanographer. This means that Dr. Caballero-Gill doesn't just study oceans as they are today. She uses chemistry and fossil evidence ______Easy · Standard English Conventions